While the protests have been miniscule in size relative to the population of the country, they have attracted considerable media attention—they make the national news regularly and the story is repeated and amplified. On the one hand, this does make sense: armed protests against efforts to protect Americans from the virus are news. On the other hand, media coverage is disproportional to the size and importance of the protests. The non-right leaning media is often attacked as having a liberal bias and while that claim can be debated, it is evident that the media does have a general bias in favor of stories that attract attention. Public and private news services need to offer stories that attract attention to draw an audience—they need an audience to stay in operation. Protests, often armed, certainly pull an audience. It can also be argued that some news services have a clear political agenda that is served by covering such stories.

While it can be argued that such stories are worth covering in the news, disproportional coverage can lead people to commit the Spotlight Fallacy. This fallacy is committed when a person uncritically assumes that the degree of media coverage given to something is proportional to how often it occurs or its importance. It is also committed when it is uncritically assumed that the media coverage of a group is representative of the size or importance of the group.

Form 1

Premise 1: X receives extensive coverage in the media.

Conclusion: X occurs in a frequency or is important proportional to its coverage.

Form 2

Premise 1: People of type P or Group G receive extensive coverage in the media.

Conclusion: The coverage of P or G is proportional to how P and G represent the general population.

This line of reasoning is fallacious since the fact that someone or something attracts the most attention or coverage in the media does not mean that it represents the whole population or that it is frequent or important.

The Spotlight fallacy derives its name from the fact that receiving a great deal of attention or coverage is often referred to as being in the spotlight. It is like the fallacies Hasty Generalization, Biased Sample and Misleading Vividness because the error being made involves generalizing about a population based on an inadequate or flawed sample.

In the case of the lockdown protests, the protests are extremely limited in both occurrence and size—but the extent of the media coverage conveys the opposite message. The defense against the Spotlight Fallacy is to look at the relevant statistics. As noted above, while the lockdown protests get a great deal of coverage, they are tiny events that are happing in an extremely limited number of locations. This is not to say that they have no importance—it is obviously worth knowing that a few people are engaged in often armed protests. As such we should look at the protests not through the magnifying glass of the media but through the corrective lenses of statistics. I know turn to an ad hominem attack on the protestors.

An ad hominem fallacy occurs when a person’s claim is rejected because of some alleged irrelevant defect about the person. In very general terms, the fallacy has this form:

Premise 1: Person A makes claim C.

Premise 2: An irrelevant attack is made on A.

Conclusion: C is false.

This is a fallacy because attacking a person does not disprove the claim they have made. In the case of a lockdown protestor, to reject their claims because they might be manipulated by astroturfing would be a fallacy. As would rejecting their claims because of something one does not like about them—like their being heavily armed or putting themselves and others at risk.

If the claims made by the protestors as a group are rejected because of the astroturfing (or other irrelevant reasons) then the genetic fallacy would have been committed. A Genetic Fallacy is bad “reasoning” in which a perceived defect in the origin of a claim or thing is taken to be evidence that discredits the claim or thing itself. Whereas the ad hominem fallacy is literally against the person, the genetic fallacy applies to groups. The group form looks like this:

Premise 1: Group A makes claim C.

Premise 2: Group A has some alleged defect.

Conclusion: C is false.

While it is important to avoid committing fallacies against the protestors, it is also important to avoid committing fallacies in their favor. Both the ad hominem and genetic fallacy can obviously be committed against those who are critical of the protestors. For example, if someone dismisses the claim that the protestors are putting themselves and others at needless risk by asserting that the critic “hates Trump and freedom”, then they would be committing an ad hominem.

To many Americans the protests seem not only odd, but dangerously crazy. This leads to the obvious question of why they are occurring. While some might be tempted to insult and attack the protestors under the guise of analysis, I will focus on a neutral explanation that is relevant to critical thinking.

One obvious reason for the protests is that the lockdown comes with an extremely high price—people have good reason to have negative feelings and it is natural to express those in a protest. But there is more to it than that—the protests are more than people expressing their concerns and worries about the lockdown. They are political statements and are thoroughly entangled with many other matters that include Trump support, anti-vaccination views, anti-abortion, second-amendment rights and even some white nationalism. This is not to claim that every protestor endorses all the views expressed at the protests—attending a protest about one thing does not entail that a person supports whatever is said by other protestors. And, of course, many groups and individuals try to exploit protests for their own purposes—so it is important to distinguish the views held by various people and groups to avoid falling into assigning guilt by association. That said, the protests are an expression of a very polarized political view and it strikes many as odd that people would be protesting basic pandemic precautions.

One driving force behind this is what I have been calling the Two Sides Problem. While there are many manifestations of this problem, the idea is that when there are two polarized sides, this provides fuel and accelerant to rhetoric and fallacies—thus making them far more likely to occur. Another aspect of having two sides is that it is much easier to exploit and manipulate people by appealing to their membership in one group and their opposition to another.

In the case of the protests, there has been a weaponization of public health. Trump’s re-election depends heavily on public perception of his handling of the pandemic and most heavily on the economy—so taking the pandemic seriously hurts Trump as does not re-opening the economy. Those who recommend the lockdown are experts—and I have written about the anti-expert bias in the United States. The weaponization of the crisis to help the right follows the usual tactics: disinformation about the crisis, claims of hoaxes, scapegoating, anti-expert rhetoric, conspiracy theories and such. Part of what drives this is the in-group bias: the cognitive bias that inclines people to assign positive qualities to their own group while assigning negative qualities to others. This also applies to accepting or rejecting claims.

This weaponization is not new or unique to the pandemic—American politics has been marked by politicizing and weaponizing a vast range of things so that one side or the other can claim a short term advantage at the cost of long term harm. Critical thinking requires us to be aware of this and to be honest about the cost of allowing this to be a standard tool of politics.

While there are many aspects to the lockdown protests, one of the core justifications is that the lockdown is a violation of Constitutional rights. The constitutional aspect is a matter of law—and I will leave that to experts in law to debate. There is also the ethical aspect—whether the lockdown is morally acceptable, and this issue can be cast in terms of moral rights. This discussion would take us far afield into the realm of moral philosophy, but I will close with an analogy that might be worth considering.

While the protestors are against the lockdown broadly, opposition to wearing masks is an aspect of the protest. While there is rational debate about the efficacy of masks, the moral argument is that the state does not have the right to compel people to wear masks. It can also be presented in terms of people having rights that the state must respect. One possibility is that people have the right to decide what parts of the body they wish to cover. If so, the obvious analogical argument is that if this right entitles people to go without masks, it also entitles people to go without clothes. If imposing masks is oppression, then so is imposing clothing in general.

Another possible right is the right to endanger others or at least freely expose other people to physical bodily ejections they do not wish to encounter. If there is such a right, then it could be argued that people have a right to fire their guns and drive as they wish—even if doing so is likely to harm or kill others. If there is a right to expose other people to physical bodily ejections that they do not want to be exposed to, then this would entail that people have the right to spit and urinate on other people. This all seems absurd.

As a practical matter, people are incredibly inconsistent when it comes to rights and restrictions, so I would expect some people to simply dismiss these analogies because they do not want to wear masks but probably do not want people running around naked. But if masks are oppression, so are clothes.

Like this:

While the various two sides
problems can arise in many circumstances, the American two-party system
provides an unfortunate exemplar. As this is being written, the Democrats are endeavoring
to remove Trump from office. The Republicans, including some who savagely
criticized Trump before he captured the Republican party, are endeavoring to
keep him in place. As would be expected in such a scenario, two sides problems
abound.

One tactic that can be
employed in such two-sided conflicts is claiming that the other side is taking
its position for wicked or irrelevant reasons. While it is a fallacy to conclude
that a claim is false or without merit simply because the person or group
making it is alleged to have wicked or irrelevant motivations, this approach
can have considerable psychological appeal. That is, it can be an effective persuasive
tool despite (or perhaps because of) the bad logic. One way to employ this
method is to simply claim that the other side is driven by wicked or irrelevant
motives. For example, the Republican defenders of Trump have asserted that the
Democrats hate Trump, that they want to undo the 2016 election, and that they
want to win the 2020 election by impeaching Trump. While acting from hate, unjustly
undoing an election, and cheating in an upcoming election would all be bad
things to do, they have no bearing on the claims about Trump’s guilt or innocence.
They do, of course, have bearing on one’s moral assessment of the Democrats,
but that is another matter entirely.

In addition to simply
asserting that the other side is driven by wicked or irrelevant motivations,
one can also try to generate the appearance that the other side is driven by
such motivations. It seems natural to be suspicious of a side that holds a
position in lockstep. In politics this is doubly suspicious, for the party will
certainly seem to be driven solely by partisan motivations and goals (which are
presumably wicked or at best irrelevant). As such, the Republicans can point to
the Democrats and claim that because they all seem to be acting as a party,
that they must be driven by wicked or irrelevant partisan motivations. If they
were acting from laudable or neutral motives, one might think, surely there
would be some division in the ranks. Interestingly enough, the Republicans can
also make the claim that if the Democrats had fair rather than foul motives, at
least some Republicans would join with them. But since the Democrats have only
the Democrats and they are all together on the matter, they must surely be driven
by wicked motives.

While the Republicans
cannot ensure that the Democrats all stick together, they can ensure that they
stick together and that none of them break ranks. While the Republicans might
want some Democrats to join them, there is also an advantage in acting in ways
that makes this unlikely—they can push the notion that the Democrats are up to
no good and are unreasonable because none of them are willing to work with the
Republicans. Since the Republicans do not need any Democrats in this matter,
this is a viable option. In contrast, the Democrats do want to win over some Republicans—they
gain more by getting Trump removed than whatever political points they might
score by accusing the Republicans of siding with Trump for wicked motives.

When one side acts to create
this sharp division and use it for rhetorical purposes, one might think that
this would be problematic for them. After all, when the Republicans all side
together and leave the Democrats on the other side and then accuse the
Democrats of being wicked partisans, an objective observer would notice that
the same charge would seem to hold against the Republicans—after all, they are
actively creating the partisan divide they are accusing the Democrats of
creating.

Another two-sides problem
is that a side will almost always regard its side as more credible and laudable
than the other side; so, the Republicans will see the Democrats as wickedly
partisan while the Democrats will see the Republicans that way. This allows each
side to, oddly, accuse the other of wicked motives by pointing to the partisan
division while conveniently ignoring their own roll in the matter.

This split does raise
the usual moral problems of how people should, morally, divide on an issue such
as impeachment. As noted in earlier essays, one could argue that truth an
morality matter not in such cases: all that matters is victory for your side
over the other side—which is yet another two-sides problem.

Like this:

Most Americans see overt racism, sexism and such as
fundamentally offensive. To use an analogy, they are as likely to swallow blatant
racism as they are to eat a shit cookie blended with parasite eggs. But like parasites
the alt right is dedicated to reproducing itself by infecting healthy hosts. Since
those in the alt right are humans, they have an edge on the lesser parasites—they
can employ their intelligence in order to trick the unwary into consuming their
eggs. So how is this done?

The alt right uses many effective strategies,
but my focus here is on what I am calling “chocolate chipping” for the obvious
reason that I am going to use the shit cookie analogy throughout this essay.
Let us begin with the anatomy of the shit cookie.

The alt right, like the totalitarian “left” of Stalinism,
Maoism and their ilk, relies on lies (the shit) and morally awful ideas (the
parasite eggs) to reproduce. Since a normie will not eat a shit cookie, with or
without parasite eggs, the alt right needs to find a way to get normies to eat
shit and thus eventually get them to consume the eggs. The way this can be done
is a rhetorical strategy of chocolate chipping. The idea is as follows.

Most people like chocolate chips and it is easy to
get people to eat chocolate chip cookies. So, continuing the analogy, if the
alt right can convince normies that the cookie is a chocolate chip cookie, they
can often get normies to eat it. But they obviously want the normies to get
used to the taste of shit. So, the tactic is to blend a little bit of shit into
the chocolate and serve up chocolate chip cookies to the normies.

For example, if an alt right person opened with “the
non-whites will swarm across our border to rape the purity of the white race”,
then few would eat that shit cookie. But if the shit is blended into the
chocolate in the form of a claim about migrants coming here to commit crimes,
then normies are more likely to bite that cookie and acclimate a bit to eating
shit. Some people can taste even the small amount of shit and spit out the
cookie. Others either do not notice it or even think that the chocolate chip
has an extra zest. Some of them start baking their own shitty cookies and serve
them to others, perhaps unaware that the secret ingredient is shit. These
partially shit cookies provide cover for the alt right: they can claim that
they are just giving away cookies and not distributing shit. Those that eat a
little shit can become the most ardent public defenders of shit cookies,
pointing to the chocolate and ignoring the shit.

The alt right then offers cookies that have ever
increasing amounts of shit in the chocolate, leading those who find they like
the taste of shit to cookies that are almost all shit. Once the former normie
is willing to eat shit cookies, then the alt right can start feeding them the
parasite eggs—the ideology of the alt right. These eggs hatch and consume the
person’s moral decency, replacing it with racism, sexism and such. The person can
then become an informed baker of shit cookies, thus propagating the alt right. So,
do not eat or bake shit cookies.

Like this:

Since most Americans find overt racism unpalatable,
racists and “pragicists” (pragmatic exploiters of racism) must put on a public
face that conceals their racism. However, they also want to recruit and advance
their agenda, so they need a way to express their racism while also maintaining
what they would like to be plausible deniability. The example I will focus on involves racism
and migration.

If a politician said, “I will build a wall to
protect the purity of the white race from becoming mongrelized by the brown rapists
swarming across our border” they would probably not last very long in office.
If a recruiter for the alt right said to “normies” that “the inferior non-white
races are defiling our women and robbing us of both our blood and soil…let me
also warn you of the covetous Jew…” they would not be very effective at turning
normies into racists. But racists need a way to get the message out in public while
also being able to deny that they are racists, should someone point out their
racism. This is where such things as dog whistles, coded language and chocolate
chipping (see my upcoming essay) come in. The basic idea is presenting racism
in a way that does not seem racist.

When it comes to migration, open racism is generally
not effective in the public arena. Fortunately for the racist, centuries of American
racism against migrants have provided a set of tools to lure in non-racists and
provide deniability. These tools are effective because they involve presenting concerns
that can be rational and non-racist.

One stock approach is to speak of migrants as criminals
who are coming here to commit crimes. It is certainly rational to be concerned
about crime and being worried about crime does not make a person a racist. As such,
casting migrants as criminals allows a racist to appeal to non-racists and if pressed
they can say they are not racists—they are just worried about crime.

Another stock tactic is to associate migrants with
disease—they are bringing diseases here that will infect us. As with crime, it
is rational to be concerned about disease and this does not make a person a racist.
This also allows racists to appeal to non-racists and gives them cover in the
form of a professed concern about health.

A third tactic is to assert that migrants are causing
economic harm by stealing American jobs and exploiting social services like
schools, food stamps and welfare. It is sensible to be worried about economic harms
and such worries do not make one a racist. Once again, this tactic provides a
cloak for the racist—they can deny their racism and assert they are just looking
out for American jobs and protecting the taxpayer.

Since it is rational to be concerned about crime,
disease and economic harms, how can one discern a non-racist from a racist?
While this method is not foolproof, the logical way is to use the facts.

While migrants do commit crimes, they commit crimes
at a rate lower than native born Americans. While having more migrants does
entail more crime, so does having more babies since more people results in more
crime. As such, reducing migration to reduce crime makes as much since as
reducing the number of babies in order to fight crime. That is, not much sense
as a general policy. If one has doubts about migrants and crime, one can
examine the police data to see the truth.

While migrants do get sick, they do not present a
significant health risk when one considers that Americans are already infecting
each other. It is, of course, rational to be concerned that war-torn countries
and failing countries might be suffering from a decline in vaccination. But Americans
are also falling behind in their vaccination rates, so this is not a threat
unique to migrants from certain places. In any case, worries about vaccinations
and disease are better addressed by health care solutions rather than broad migration
policies. Examination of health data will show that migrants are not a health
threat.

While it is true that illegal migrants can lower
wages because businesses engage in illegal hiring practices and can exploit
undocumented workers, illegal migrants are not stealing jobs. Rather, they are
being given jobs illegally. Migrants that are here legally are also not
stealing jobs, they are being hired.

The main reasons Americans lose jobs is not
because migrants take them. Rather the causes tend to be technological change
(such as automation), economic factors (such as natural gas being cheaper than
coal), and decisions by business leaders (such as sending jobs overseas). As
far as checking on whether migrants have stolen jobs, think about this—how many
legally run American businesses have fired their American workers and
replaced them with migrants here in America? Is there, for example, a big GM plant
in Michigan being staffed entirely by Mexicans?

When a person who endorses harsh migration
policies and professes that is because of concerns about crime, disease and
economic harms, the method to test them is to present the facts of the matter.
If the person is not a racist, they will be willing to reconsider their
position. After all, if they favor harsh migration polices directed at brown
people because they believe that they would meaningfully reduce crime and they
learn that they will not, they should change their position. If the facts have
no impact on their position, then that serves as evidence that they are a non-racist
who rejects facts or a racist (or perhaps a pragicist).

It might be objected that someone could actively
argue that migrants are disease carrying criminals who come here to steal jobs
and exploit the social system and that they are not racists. While this is
possible, they would need to prove their claims and thus overturn all existing
evidence to the contrary. It is also worth noting that the notion that migrants
are disease carrying criminals is a very old one. If your family is not pure WASP,
it is rather likely the same was said about your family. So, which is more
likely: that past and present migrants were or are disease carrying criminals coming
here to steal jobs or that these assertions are just tired racism hidden under
a badly worn and threadbare cloak of deceit?

Like this:

As noted in the earlier essays, demonizing is a
rhetorical strategy that aims at casting the target as evil, corrupt, dangerous
or threatening. Demonizing can also be used to fuel or intensify other
fallacies. One such fallacy is demonic justification.

Demonic justification is a fallacy in which a
target is demonized in order to justify how the target is being treated, such
as actions taken against the target or policies enacted that are detrimental to
the target. The fallacy has the following form:

Premise 1: Target person or group T is demonized.

Conclusion: Action A against T is justified.

The reason that the conclusion does not follow from
the premises is that the action taken is justified by demonization rather than
actual reasons. Since demonization, by definition, involves making either
selective, exaggerated or false claims, demonization cannot justify an action.
It must also be noted that committing this fallacy does not entail that the
action is unjustified; as with any fallacy the conclusion is not disproven because
it is the conclusion of a fallacy (to think otherwise is to fall victim to the
fallacy fallacy).

This fallacy is, as would be expected, often used
to try to justify damaging, harsh and even brutal actions or policies. It derives
its power from the willingness of people to engage in demonizing and the not
unreasonable belief that harsh measures must be taken against the wicked. This technique
is often used in war to motivate and try to justify the killing of enemy
soldiers. It is also a powerful tool in domestic politics and is often used to try
to justify discriminatory and racist policies under the guise of dealing with
bad people. For example, throughout history migrants have been demonized as
diseased criminals who are out to steal jobs from native workers. This demonizing
has been used to try to justify harsh immigration policies and even violence
against migrants. As another example, Stalinists and Maoists have historically
demonized their targets, thus attempting to justify their harsh and brutal
measures.

The main defense against demonic justification is
being aware that demonization is occurring and this can happen when one takes
the time to seriously ask if the claims are true. Since people are influenced
strongly by their biases, prejudices and stereotypes, this can be very
challenging. People also like to believe that they are on the side of good and are
battling evil, and demonization plays right into this.

Like this:

A genetic fallacy is a flawed argument that comes
in negative and positive variations. In
the negative version a perceived defect in the origin of a claim or thing is
taken as evidence discrediting the claim or thing itself. The positive
variation is an error in reasoning in which the origin of a claim or thing is
taken to be evidence for the claim or proof that the thing is good. A Demonic
Genetic Fallacy is, as would be expected, always negative.

A genetic fallacy, demonic or not, differs from
the ad hominem fallacies in that a strictly defined ad hominem always targets
an individual while the genetic fallacy can be used to target groups or
institutions.

The demonic version of this fallacy involves two
steps, the first of which distinguishes the demonic from the normal genetic
fallacy.

First, the target, which is the origin of the
claim or thing, is demonized. As noted in the first essay on the subject,
demonizing is portraying the target as evil, corrupt, dangerous or
threatening. This can be done in the
usual three ways: selective demonizing, hyperbolic demonizing or fictional
demonizing. Selective demonizing is when some true negative fact about the
target is focused on to the exclusion of other facts about the target. Hyperbolic demonizing involves greatly
exaggerating a negative fact about the target. Fictional demonizing is simply
lying about the target. Second, the attack on the origin of the claim or thing
is taken to discredit the claim or thing.

The demonic genetic fallacy has the following two forms:

Premise 1. Claim (or argument) C originates from
group G.

Premise 2. Group G is demonized.

Conclusion: Therefore, C is false (or the argument
fails).

Premise 1. A originated from O.

Premise 2. O is demonized.

Conclusion: A is discredited.

The reason why the demonic genetic fallacy is a
fallacy is that demonizing a group or origin has no bearing on the truth of a
claim, the quality of an argument or the origin of a thing. In addition to the
logical error, a demonic genetic fallacy also suffers from the fact that
demonizing, by definition, involves deception. At the very least, demonizing
involves taking facts out of context and commonly involves outright falsehoods.

A demonic genetic fallacy can have considerable
psychological force since demonizing typically goes beyond the usual attacks in
a non-demonic genetic fallacies and thus can trigger strong emotions. A common
tactic is to demonize the target using stereotypes the audience already accepts
and by appealing to their biases, fears and prejudices. Such an audience will
be inclined to accept the demonization as true and their emotional response can
lead them to accept the fallacious reasoning.

There are two main defenses against demonizing.
One is to be aware of the logical flaw in the fallacy. Even if the demonizing
claims were true, the reasoning would still be flawed: true but irrelevant
negative claims about the origin of something, no matter how terrible, do not
disprove a claim or argument or prove a defect in the thing. The other is to be
critical about negative claims and only accept them if they are adequately
supported by evidence. One excellent example of the demonic genetic fallacy in the
real world is Trumps demonizing of the media.

While Republicans have long attacked the media as having
a liberal bias, Donald Trump escalated this attack to full demonization. He has
gone far beyond accusing them of bias and has labeled journalist as disgusting,
crooked, and dangerous. In terms of full on demonization, he has declared reporters
to be “the enemy of the American people.” While Trump does attack individual
journalists, this general attack on journalists is intended to discredit the
claims Trump dislikes, such as accurate reporting of his lies and misdeeds. While
the media certainly does suffer from the usual human biases and some
journalists dislike Trump a great deal, his demonizing is generally composed of
outright lies